Cal State faculty approve 4-year contract

The California State University faculty has overwhelmingly approved a new four-year labor contract, ending more than two years of contentious bargaining with the administration, the union said Tuesday.

Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, said the contract, which largely preserves current working conditions and contains no salary raises, won 91 percent of approval by voting members.

About 45 percent of the union's 12,500 voting members cast ballots over several weeks last month. Many faculty members were out of town on research assignments, Taiz said.

"We didn't get everything we wanted, but we didn't get everything taken away, either," said Sharon Chadwick, a science librarian at Humboldt State University and chair of the CFA Disabilities Caucus. "Public employee unions have had to give up a lot lately, but actually we didn't have to give up that much."

The contract, which must still be ratified by the university's board of trustees at its meeting later this month, covers 23,000 professors, lecturers and other professional employees throughout CSU's 23 campuses. Not all are voting members.

"I can't see why they wouldn't sign off on it," Chadwick said of the board of trustees.

Faculty members have been working without a contract for the last 2 1/2 years during a contentious bargaining process that spurred a strike-authorization vote and intervention of a mediator last spring.

With that issue now resolved, Taiz said faculty will be fully engaged in lobbying for passage of Proposition 30, which calls for increasing the sales tax and income taxes for the wealthy to raise funds for public education. If the measure fails in November, CSU will lose $250 million starting in January, triggering a projected budget shortfall of more than $5 million at HSU.

"It's one of those moments, and it doesn't happen too often, when faculty and the board are on the same page," Taiz said. "We are 100 percent engaged in what happens next."

Much of the union's battle was to preserve items that the university sought to take away, Taiz said when the tentative labor agreement was reached in August.

More than $750 million has been cut from CSU's budget over the past three years. With class sizes increasing, no pay raises for four years, and program cuts that threaten jobs, employees said morale is low on campuses.

"The faculty are feeling fairly beaten down," said Jonathan Karpf, an anthropology lecturer at San Jose State University. "But the majority are feeling better that we've reached an agreement."